The name I’ll give him is not his own, let’s call him “Fred”. I met the old man several years ago and over that ime we have become rather close. I wouldn’t say he is lonely, but I think he enjoys relationships more than he has them. He has a large family and they call him regularly, but they all live several states away and can’t visit more than 3-4 times per year. His wife died about a year ago after a lengthy struggle with cancer – he cared for her right up until the end.

Fred was an electrical engineer and enjoyed a good life working with heavy industry. That is why, though he is from Tennessee originally, he spent most of his life in Louisiana & Texas. He specialized in power systems for the oil industry. His work made him well-off, if not wealthy. There is nothing he can’t afford that he would wish to buy or do. Isn’t that wealthy?

Over the course of time Fred has come to know me rather well and about 6 months ago began telling me about his Korean War. I vaguely knew that it started during the Truman Administration, that MacArthur had forgotten his constitutional role and Truman explained it to him and that the war ended in a ceasefire, not peace. Fred knew more about the war, but not the geopolitical part. Fred was an infantry soldier. He worked with stuff I had never heard of: UNPIK, Donkey’s, Task Force William Able, Wolfpacks, CCRAK, etc. Strange names and acronyms. He said he’d seen an episode on “The History Channel” about special ops in Korea and that the narrator mentioned that most of the records were unclassified in the late 1990’s. Fred didn’t know that until the show said he was shocked out of his seat seeing that stuff on TV!

As a result of our conversations, which are continuing, I began doing some research on the special operations aspect of the Korean War. It is a typical story of valor and courage in the low end with Byzantine incompetence in the upper end. I think the first instance of that pattern in a military campaign that I am aware of was in the Trojan Wars. There were undoubtedly others before that, but they were not written down. Fred was just a soldier doing his duty. He could have been a spear chucker for Menelaus or a rifleman for Rumsfeld.

Here is my reading list so far: Darkmoon by Evanhoe; White Tigers by Malcom and In the Devil's Shadow by Haas. “Colorful” backgrounds for these guys, too.

Finally, each of these guys admired the North Korean partisans with whom they worked. If you read the Malcom’s book you will understand why. Truly amazing men.